The present invention relates generally to rear-mounted drawer slides, and particularly, to improved drawer slide guide rails for rear-mounted drawer slides.
For many years, furniture manufacturers have used rear-mounted drawer slide assemblies with certain cabinet configurations to achieve smooth, even, drawer opening and closing. These drawer slide assemblies typically consist of left and right pairs of drawer runners and guide rails. The guide rails are secured to the rear wall of the furniture cabinet.
In recognition of the dimensional imprecision and other variables inherent in a manufacturing environment, various types of rear mounting brackets have been developed to mount the rear end of the guide rail, thus ensuring a proper alignment of the drawers within a cabinet at the time of manufacture as well as permitting periodic adjustment during the life of the furniture. While these brackets have been satisfactory to a degree, they suffer from inherent looseness and slippage problems resulting from tolerances in their own manufacture, inadequate installation, and unavoidable wear over the lifetime of the product. These brackets while simply designed and manufactured without great precision, are low cost items that wear quickly and frequently break when subjected to routine drawer openings and closings. Additionally, the mere use of mounting brackets and other hardware requires that furniture manufacturers maintain a sizeable inventory of brackets and fasteners, thus requiring additional space and carrying costs.
While the mounting brackets described hereinabove permit lateral adjustments of side-mounted guide rails, they provide no solution to manufacturing variations in drawer cabinet depths. Thus, where a cabinet is constructed shallower than prescribed, the guide rails may be too long and if the cabinets are deeper than prescribed, the guide rails are not long enough. Accordingly, rework or rejection of the cabinet may result or item-by-item modifications to existing hardware may be required.
The prior art discloses a universal drawer slide mounting bracket for assembling drawer rail assemblies in multiple positions. However, this universal bracket still requires additional installation hardware. There are known laterally adjustable mounting brackets for use with both tongueless drawer guides and those having laterally formed tongues. There is also known a guide rail mounting bracket that utilizes teeth for enhancing the degree of grip between the bracket and the guide rail. However, these still require the furniture manufacturer to maintain an additional inventory of such parts for use with side-mounted drawer assemblies, and because of their unique constructions, do not have universal utility. Further, they offer no solution to the variations in drawer cabinet depths.
The present invention is directed to a rear-mounted guide rail which compensates for out of square drawers or cabinets by making lateral adjustments to the guide rail, without the need for tools or special laterally adjustable mounting brackets, after the guide rail is installed in a cabinet and as may be needed over the lifetime of the piece of furniture. A further aspect of the present invention is to provide such a rear-mounted guide rail that can be mounted to the rear of a cabinet without the need for any form of rear mounting bracket or other hardware and that can compensate for minor variances between the cabinet front and rear walls.
Accordingly, one aspect of the present invention is to provide a laterally adjustable guide rail that includes an elongated side wall having a mounting surface at the front end for connecting the front end to a cabinet front surface and a rear extension member for connecting the drawer slide to the rear wall of the cabinet. A roller may be attached to the side wall outer surface to facilitate opening and closing movement of the associated drawer slide or runner. By inserting the rear extension member through the cabinet rear wall, the need for a rear mounting bracket is eliminated. Further, the rear extension member is of sufficient length to accommodate inaccuracies and manufacturing tolerances in the depth of the cabinet. An extension member that is about three-quarters of an inch long is suitable for this purpose; however, shorter or longer extension members may be chosen, depending upon the specific application.
Another aspect of the present invention is to provide a laterally adjustable guide rail that includes an elongated side wall having upper and lower flanges and front and rear ends for mounting the guide rail to the cabinet front and rear walls. Substantially vertically aligned notches formed in the upper and lower flanges, and extending substantially the width of the flanges, permit simple, flexible adjustments of the installed guide rail. Desirably, the notches are U or V-shaped.
These and other aspects of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art after reading the following description of the preferred embodiment when considered with the drawings.